Jennifer Bobo, an assistant professor of communication studies at UNC-CH, has an experimental audience of black women view or read black cultural works, including the film DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST, then interviews them to determine their reactions.

Pauli Murray was indeed a woman ahead of her time. She became the first African American student at Yale Law School to earn a JSD and the first African American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priesthood.

Miss Charlotte Rhone was a founder and the third president of the Climbers Club of New Bern, a non-profit organization of African American women. Rhone was also the first black registered nurse in North Carolina and the first black social worker in Craven County.

The Climbers Club of New Bern was organized in 1921 by nine prominent African American women. The club’s purpose was to unite New Bern citizens by sponsoring activities for women, and to encourage things that make citizens a better and broader group of people.

Supervising, tending, and harvesting the tobacco crop was a non-traditional role for African-American women in the 1960s. Mildred Keaton recounts how her mother and many black women she knew managed small tobacco farms as their husbands worked full-time jobs in Bladen and Columbus counties. Keaton and Estella Graham’s stories highlight the many roles African-American women played in tobacco farming, from planting to hauling the cured leaves to market.